


To The Grave

by chellerrific



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellerrific/pseuds/chellerrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s been an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Grave

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for discussions of death, manslaughter, guns, burial, and law school.
> 
> Thanks to my alpha Phil, who would definitely bring the shovels if asked.

It should have been a peaceful night in the woods, the moon only a sliver, the stars bright against the darkness, the crickets singing, an owl hooting in the distance. Should have been, but wasn’t.

“Ow! Shit!” Artemis yelled when Apollo hit her foot with the shovel yet again. “Dammit. Let me do it myself, okay? Otherwise at this rate you’re going to have to bury _me_ , too.”

“No, I can do it,” Apollo said, but the tears streaming down his face suggested otherwise.

Artemis pried the shovel handle from his fingers and tossed it away. “Go sit down and get ahold of yourself. Fuck.”

Shivering a bit, Apollo complied, climbing out of the shallow hole they had dug and toddling to a nearby tree. He slumped against it, then let his face drop into his hands.

The steady crunch and crumble of the shovel plunging into the soft dirt and shifting it unceremoniously aside continued, punctuated occasionally by one of Apollo’s sniffles. Neither he nor Artemis spoke for several long minutes.

“Maybe,” he said at last, “maybe they won’t notice he’s gone right away. Maybe nobody will start looking for awhile.”

“Apollo, he was a professional basketball player. They’ve probably _already_ noticed.”

“Don’t do that, please.”

“What? Be reasonable?”

“Refer to him in the past tense.”

Artemis stopped digging momentarily, thrusting the tip of the shovel into the ground and leaning her weight on the handle. “Apollo. Come on. Stay with me. He’s dead. Say it. Orion is dead.”

“Orion is dead,” Apollo said miserably.

“ _Orion is dead_.”

“Orion is dead.”

“Orion is dead and we can’t do anything about that. All we can do is try to cover our asses.”

“We… maybe we should go to the police and tell them it was an accident,” Apollo said. “There’s still time, and it’s the truth, after all.”

“Are you kidding me?” Artemis returned to digging. “He was a professional athlete, and his father is a _retired_ professional athlete who makes bank in merch every year. That’s massive amounts of money and public opinion on their side. We have, what? Your unfinished law degree? There’s no way they’re not going to nail us to the wall no matter what the truth is. Poseidon is going to want to see someone punished.”

“But we didn’t do anything _wrong_ ,” Apollo insisted.

“I know that!” Artemis snapped. “I know it and you know it. But we don’t have a way to _prove_ it. And I don’t need to remind you that there were at least two dozen witnesses to that big fight you two had the other day.”

“So they’re going to come after us even without a body!”

“No, they won’t. They’ll only know it was us if we _tell_ them, like you so helpfully keep suggesting we do. Otherwise we should pass under the radar without a problem as long you keep your damn mouth shut.”

“But you just said—”

“I _said_ the fight you had would make our story of an accident seem fishy.”

“It’s not a story, it’s the truth,” Apollo said feebly.

Artemis ignored him. “ _Without_ us painting a target on our own backs, there are a lot of other, better suspects. There’s that ex-girlfriend of his, the one he has the kid with. They were having custody fights, and girlfriends and spouses and stuff are always the first suspects. He and his dad didn’t always get along so great either, and people knew that. And everybody knows Poseidon has a temper. I’m not saying they could make any of these charges stick—”

“What? We don’t want them to!” Apollo started to get up. “Right? We’re not sending innocent people to prison, _right_? Because I—”

“Apollo!” Artemis snapped, bringing a beat of dead silence throughout the woods for a solid second. “ _Nobody_ is going to prison.”

Apollo was unconvinced, but he went limp against the tree again. “I hate to bring up another flaw in your airtight plan, Artemis, but do I need to remind you that the press thinks Orion was dating _you_? If significant others are the first suspects…”

Artemis sighed. “I _know_ that. I’m not stupid. First of all, we were absolutely not dating, and anybody who knows me knows that. Please, right? The press can push that fiction all they want but in _this_ case the facts are on my side. And second of all, do you really think I haven’t thought this all through? Obviously we’re going to make sure we establish alibis, to nip it in the bud.”

“What do you mean? Oh!” He sat up. “Seph, and D! They’ll lie for us, and both of them are good at it, too.”

“Hermes, too, maybe, if he wasn’t already somewhere else,” Artemis said.

“So… so that will rule us out, because we were with other people when he went missing, and they can’t know it was our gun that killed him, because they can’t find the body.”

“Exactly. They’ll eliminate us from the start and never think twice about it.” Artemis paused to wipe the sweat off her brow. “We should still get rid of the gun, though. Melt it down or something, I don’t know.”

“Artemis… what _if_ they find the body?”

“They won’t.” The digging resumed, steady and bleak. “I know these woods better than anybody. You’d have to know you were looking for something here, and even then you’d still have trouble finding it.”

“That’s what people on true crime TV shows always say.” Apollo was beginning to get agitated all over again. “People who are on true crime TV shows, note, because they got _caught_ and were sent to _prison_. I can’t go to prison! Look at me!”

“Nobody is going to prison! If they do find the body—which I guarantee they won’t—we’ll figure out something else,” Artemis said.

“Like what?”

It was a fair question, and she didn’t exactly have an answer to give him off the top of her head.

“We’re screwed, we’re so screwed,” he said.

Artemis kept digging.

Apollo despaired in silence for a bit, then suddenly sat up again. “I have an idea! How about you tell them you did it, and I tell them I did it, and that way they’ll never know which of us did it, and they can’t prosecute either of us!”

Artemis stopped mid-stroke to look at him. “What the fuck, Apollo? Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? That’s not how the law works. The hell is your tuition paying for?”

“I don’t know!” He threw his hands into the air. “I’m freaking out over here!”

“Yeah, this must be so hard on you,” she muttered, shoving a loose hank of hair back out of her face. “Apollo, for the millionth time, we can’t tell anyone what happened. Not the police, not our family, not our friends, _no one_.”

“Er, you mean except Seph and D, right? I mean, they’re supposed to be our alibis.”

“No, I don’t. Not even them. We’ll tell them we need alibis for some other reason—we were doing something _else_ at the time that we don’t want the police to find out about. Stealing something or destroying something or… or snorting something, I don’t know. We’ll think of something. It doesn’t really matter, they’ll back us up on it. But we can’t trust anybody not to blab the truth. You want to talk about what gets people on crime shows caught, it’s running their goddamn big mouths. This stays with the two of us alone, permanently.”

“So… they can never know? Ever?”

“ _No one_ can ever know, ever,” Artemis said emphatically. “This is something we take to our graves. Right? You with me? Apollo?”

Apollo took a deep breath, but the truth was he didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m with you. Always. To the grave.”


End file.
